Yahaira Urbina serves as a Field Scientist for Panthera’s Belize Jaguar Program, in addition to her position as a junior wildlife biologist with the Environmental Research Institute (ERI) at the University of Belize. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Natural Resources Management in 2010 and was subsequently hired by Panthera as a Research Assistant. In this position, she has worked to ground truth the Central Belize Corridor (CBC), and later received funding from the UK Darwin Initiative to conduct a national survey on wildlife law awareness.

In 2012, Yahaira was awarded a scholarship and obtained a post-graduate diploma in International Wildlife Conservation Practice from the University of Oxford. Upon returning to the field, Yahaira has conducted research on mitigation of human-jaguar conflict in Belize. She is currently developing a project with the Belize Country Program Director, Dr. Rebecca Foster to quantify game hunting in and around the Central Belize Corridor - the first attempt to estimate hunting rates of game species in Belize.